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As with all BFE Annual Conferences, we welcome papers and panels on any aspect of current ethnomusicological research. The 2018 theme will be Europe and post-Brexit Ethnomusicologies.

Amidst the most profound European (and American) socio-political ruptures since 1945, the position and roles of ethnomusicology has never been more important both for the plural and changing constituencies of identity (‘British’, ‘European’, ‘Global’) and for those in one part of the world who research and perform musics from another part. In some senses, displacements and musical changes are consequences of globalization, and from the growing inequalities that continue to emerge from polarized global wealth and consumption. We wish to focus attention on the position and approaches to ethnomusicology within Britain and Europe both before and after the emerging new European settlements for the academy, European communities, refugee and migrant communities, students and their Others. By extension, we are also interested in exploring these same, and parallel, issues beyond Europe.

Call for papers deadline:

1 Nov 2017

Conference dates:

12 Apr 2018 to 15 Apr 2018

Call for papers:

We invite you to submit papers, panels, roundtables, posters, and films on any aspect of ethnomusicological research. We particularly invite presentations that focus on

•Changes in British, European or global musical life

•How ethnomusicology might flourish in times of rapid change

•Ethnomusicology and internationalism

•The musicology of migration, refuge and asylum

•Globalism and the musical politics of regionalism

•The changing faces of European ethnomusicology

•Socio-political ruptures and their consequences for ethnomusicology

•Public and applied ethnomusicology in times of rapid transformational change

•European musics and religions

•Epistemologies of ethnomusicology

•Collaborative methodologies in ethnomusicology

•Economic ethnomusicology and the ethnomusicology of exchange

•Ethnomusicologies of nationalism

•Post-Brexit ethnomusicology

•Non-British/European musics in Britain/Europe

•Regionalism and musical Others

•Ethnomusicology and political advocacy

DEADLINE FOR SUBMISSIONS IS 1st NOVEMBER 2017. Successful applicants will be notified in December. Please note that all presenters must be members of the BFE.

Paper and panel abstracts should be submitted to BFE2018newcastle.ac.uk. Use the following formats to enable anonymous review:

•Paper proposals: include the name and email address of the proposer, paper title, and abstract (the latter not exceeding 250 words). The name of the proposer should not appear in the body of the abstract.

•Organised session proposals: include the names and email addresses of the proposer and the other participants, a title and overall abstract for the session (not exceeding 250 words), and abstracts for each contributor (no more than 250 words each). The names of the proposer and participants should not appear in the body of the abstracts.

•Roundtable proposals: include the names and email addresses of the proposer and the other participants (the proposer will be assumed to be the chair unless stated otherwise), a title and overall abstract for the roundtable (not exceeding 250 words), and abstracts for each contributor (no more than 250 words each). The names of the proposer and participants should not appear in the body of the abstracts.

•Poster proposals: include the name and email address of the researcher, poster title, and a description of the material to be presented (not exceeding 250 words). The name of the proposer should not appear in the description.

•Proposals for films or other media presentations: include the name and email of the proposer, title of film/presentation, abstract (not exceeding 250 words), and length of film/presentation. The name of the proposer should not appear in the body of the abstract.

Keynote Speaker: Professor Doctor Britta Sweers

Professor of Cultural Anthropology of Music, Deputy Director of the Institute of Musicology, Director of the Center for Global Studies

Britta Sweers is Professor of Cultural Anthropology of Music at the Institute of Musicology (since 2009) and Director of the Center for Global Studies (since 2015) at the University of Bern (Switzerland). Since 2015 she has also been President of the European Seminar in Ethnomusicology (ESEM). Having studied at Hamburg University (Ph.D. 1999) and Indiana University (Bloomington; 1992/93), she was Assistant (2001-2003) and Junior Professor of Systematic Musicology and Ethnomusicology at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater Rostock (Germany) from 2003 to 2009. Her research addresses the transformation of traditional musics (particularly of the British Isles, the Baltic Countries, and Scandinavia) in global contexts, music and nationalism, gender, applied ethnomusicology, and soundscapes. She has been leading the inter-European SNF project City Sonic Ecology: Urban Soundscapes of Bern, Ljubljana, and Belgrade since 2014. Major publications include Electric Folk: The Changing Face of English Traditional Music (2005), Polyphonie der Kulturen ([“Polyphony of Cultures”] CD/CD-ROM 2006/8), and Grenzgänge – Gender, Ethnizität und Klasse als Wissenskategorien in der Musikwissenschaft ([“Border Crossing – Gender, Race, and Class as Category of Knowledge in Musicology”] edited with Cornelia Bartsch, 2016). She is co-editor of the European Journal of Musicology and of the Equinox book series Transcultural Music Studies.

BFE Student Prize and Bursaries

Student presenters are encouraged to submit their papers for the BFE Student Prize (https://bfe.org.uk/bfe-student-prize), awarded annually for the best student paper presented at the BFE annual conference. Students may also apply for a BFE Bursary to assist with the cost of attending the conference. Details concerning the prize and bursaries will be circulated closer to the conference date.